We are extremely pleased to host this guest column by Nasrin Alavi, editor of We Are Iran, a new collection which looks at present-day Iran through the eyes - and entries - of its bloggers.
After the 1979 revolution, women were viewed as central to the project of changing the public morality and wearing the veil became mandatory. Yet a quarter of a century later, girls mock the strict guidelines by wearing their compulsory headscarves way back over their head to reveal as much (illicit) hair as possible; meanwhile the obligatory manteau gowns are getting shorter and tighter, to the point that they are no longer the black cloaks considered the ideal revolutionary hejab. Here blogger Atash (Fire) describes her encounter with the Morality Police.
25 May 2003
I could feel the searing sun like a piece of burning coal on my veil . . . My veil and my long robes make me smell like a corpse . . . I walk on the street but can’t see the end . . . Far, far away, a group of trees are doing a choreographed dance . . .
And I, on the street, I'm walking . . . Passers-by, those in cars, can’t see me, as if I’m here but I'm not . . . Far, far away, I can see a mirror that has taken up the width of the street . . . And the nearer I get to it the more distant I become . . . I’m walking in a scorching heat that rips the breath out of you . . .
I catch a glimpse of myself, lighter, lighter and lighter . . . With each step in my mind’s eye, I no longer feel the burden of my walk.
I’m wearing a white short-sleeved top, green shorts and a scented straw hat . . . I no longer smell like a corpse or like my grandmother’s damp basement.
I walk freely and am spreading my fragrant sweet dreams among people who cannot see me . . . They’re running to get away from the harsh, searing sun . . . What ecstasy . . .
There is a hand on my shoulder that abruptly swallows my world . . . The toxic street voice with rage barks: ‘Pull your veil forward!’ I hear it, but I don't want to hear it.
The street filth put his hand in his back pocket to show that he’s searching for something . . . His mime does not frighten me. He pulls out a transmitter from his putrid shirt pocket and this time pointing at his black patrol van, with fury, hollers: ‘What do you say now?’
As I was stranded between two worlds . . . at high noon . . . I was hungry and thirsty . . . in an endless street where right at the end the trees were doing a choreographed dance . . . My veil moved and came forward . . . A few steps away my veil moved back again.
Email: at_857@hotmail.com
Prior to the Revolution many traditional families refused to send their daughters to university. They believed it would violate their Islamic way of life. In those days, the majority of educated working women did not wear Islamic covering, but the majority of women did, especially in the provinces. Paradoxically, mandatory veiling may have helped some women to gain an education, especially in traditional families, as they did not need to go through a drastic cultural makeover to leave the house or enter the workplace.
In 1936, when the Shah tried to make it law that all women should cease to wear their veils, he failed due to popular outrage. In 1975, women’s illiteracy in rural areas was 90 percent and more than 45 percent in towns. Today, the nationwide literacy rate for girls aged between 15 and 24 has risen to 97 per cent. Notably, last year more than 65% of those entering university were women.
In 2003, Shirin Ebadi, an Iran based Human rights activist caused uproar among Iran’s ruling clerics when she attended the Nobel ceremony to accept the Peace Prize unveiled. She even received public death threats from extremist groups. Yet Ebadi has spoken out against the French ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools. ‘If there is a law [against headscarves], only extremists will profit from it, as it would be an excuse to prevent their daughter’s education,’ she said. ‘The better the girls are educated and the more they go to school, the more emancipated they will become.’
The Revolution’s impact on women has been entirely paradoxical, as it has both opened up new possibilities for them and at the same time instituted the most repressive controls on their lives.
Although they’re discriminated against, Iranian women continue to play a considerable role in everyday life. However, this cannot be explained through recourse to the much-used western media paradigm of brave, heroic women subjugated by a post-9/11 caricature of a brutal Muslim male. Such blatant stereotypes merely encourage urbane readers to indulge in raw bigotry while at the same time shoring up a sense of personal decency. Reading the intimate, on-line commentaries of Iranians, we are sometimes granted a rare glimpse of life beyond the crude stereotypes.
1 January 2003
To my wife on our sixteenth wedding anniversary
We have struggled and yet we have survived . . . we have been humiliated, but we have not lost our dignity . . .
Do you remember when we were first married? We rented this room in south Teheran and had to share a toilet with the landlord . . . There was no bathroom and we had to use a public baths . . .
Do you remember that time, when we took all the money we had and went to a posh restaurant uptown? We had a wonderful meal and gave the rest of the money as a tip to the waiter . . . we had no money left for a taxi . . . so we walked all the way home across the whole town . . . we had a lot of energy then . . .
Do you remember the time our son was born . . . through all that bombing and war . . . in that climate of death we built a new life . . . and the evening our daughter was born . . . With two kids and work, you still went to university and you were top of your class . . .
Do you remember getting war rations for dried milk – to prove that you had no milk, you had to show your breasts to the ‘sister’ at the [revolutionary] Komiteh every week . . . but we would not have that . . . ‘We’ll work overtime and buy dried milk on the open market . . . But we’re not showing your breasts to anyone!’
I said all this stuff so you know that I haven’t forgotten . . . our mutual troubles, growth and love can never be destroyed. We are just starting . . . with more energy than ever before . . .
We will go forward to change a world that was unjust for our children and make it a fairer place for our grandchildren.
shabah@shabah.org
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